‘Oh, come, now, Maggie, you must make some allowance for the Press. It was only a story I was after.’
‘Ay, and ye got one, too! How dared ye stab the old laird and gie him his death-blaw?’
‘What?’ said Grant, in a kind of strangled yelp. ‘What are you saying, you old…?’
‘I’m no an old what you said the now, and my name’s not Maggie. I say I ken verra well how Mr Bradan came by his death. I haena told any other body, but gin ye dinna tak’ yoursel’ awa’ from here and let me never set een on ye mair, I will go to the police and swear to them on my aith that ye murdered the old laird.’
Grant was unable to speak, but Laura said:
‘You’ve bought it, chum. So my word wouldn’t have helped you, even if I had been able to give it, you see.’
Grant turned and ran. The three women gazed after him until they lost him at the bend in the road. George joined them on the quayside.
‘Well,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘you have saved me from a most unwelcome duty, Mrs Corrie. I thought I should have been obliged to present the same home truth to young Mr Grant as you have done.’
‘Are ye for the boatie?’ Mrs Corrie demanded.
Her passengers stepped in and George relieved her of the oars.
‘Had Corrie any particular reason for visiting Freagair?’ Dame Beatrice enquired. ‘He said nothing about it before we left this afternoon.’
‘He was needing a pick-axe and he kens a man in Freagair will no be sweer to gie him the loan of one. My man was fair fashed tae be howking over at Haugr wi’ a fork and shovel the morn.’
‘Oh, I see. He thought that a pick-axe would do the work more quickly and easily, and, if we were going on with that same work, there is no doubt that he would be right.’
‘Ye’ll no be howking over there the morn’s morn, then?’
‘No, the digging I intended is all done.’ No more was said until they had tied up the boat and were at the front door of An Tigh Mór. Then Dame Beatrice added as though there had been no break in the conversation, ‘I suppose there is a key to the cellar?’
‘And what would ye be wanting wi’ the cellar?’ asked Mrs Corrie, preparing to make her way to her own regions at the back of the house. ‘There’s naething of interest in the cellar but a dozen bottles, maybe, of whisky.’
‘I should like the key of the cellar, all the same.’
‘It will be in the door, then. That is where my man left it when he took all the old laird’s siller and hid it where nane o’ ye will find it.’
‘When was this?’
‘Just after ye left for Tigh-Osda. Oh, ye need not think we were stealing it. It’s a’ there for them it’s meant for.’
‘And who might they be?’
‘The Grants of Coinneamh Lodge, maist like. It’s common talk that Mistress Grant was closer to the old laird than some others.’
Chapter 22
The Last Word
‘ “I tell ’e,” he said to the vicar, bringing his fist with a smack into the palm of his hand, “I tell ’e the burials be goin’ to the daags … But four holes to fill in a twalmonth, setting aside the Lunnon man kilt by the Ramps, and the corpse pickt out o’ Spook Pool, neither o’ them the rightful property o’ the parish.” ’
Angus Evan Abbott
« ^
‘Well,’ said Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin, when he rejoined his wife and Dame Beatrice at the latter’s Kensington house, ‘you both seem to have had quite a holiday.’
‘I think it’s absolutely stinking,’ said Laura, ‘that we didn’t discover the treasure.’
‘Dame B. didn’t intent that you should. What do you say, Counsel for the Defence?’
‘It might have been embarrassing,’ Dame Beatrice admitted. ‘It seemed better to give Corrie the hint and allow him to get rid of it in our absence.’
‘Good heavens!’ said Laura, disgusted. ‘Is that why we went to interview Ian at Tigh-Osda? But Mrs Corrie said – ! Wasn’t her story true?’
‘Partly,’ said Dame Beatrice soothingly, ‘but only partly. The treasure was still in the cellar when we left for Tigh-Osda and I have no doubt whatever that, as soon as we were safely away from Tannasgan, Mrs Corrie told her husband where it was and advised him to move it while we were out of the house. Unless I am greatly mistaken, we shall see no more of your sometime host, though. There is nothing now for him on Tannasgan.’
She was not mistaken. Later they heard, through Gavin’s contact with the Edinburgh police, that Macbeth had been flown to South America, with the treasure, having made only a pretence of leaving the neighbourhood of Tannasgan in order to keep watch on the Corries. Young Grant had given himself up to the authorities and had made a full confession of how, unwittingly and without malice, he had delivered the coup de grace to the already dying laird. Young Bradan contrived to commit suicide before he could be brought to trial.
‘Marmaduke,’ quoted Gavin solemnly, after having given these melancholy details, ‘was a bad lad, I’m afraid. There’s no doubt he hit his father over the head in Inverness with, as we say, intent.’
‘Well, I don’t wonder,’ said Laura, ‘with a father like Cù Dubh. And was Mrs Grant of Coinneamh Lodge really young Bradan’s mother?’
‘I didn’t find that out, but there is no other story, and there was the Salmon which went astray.’
‘You mean that Cù Dubh wasn’t a Scot?’
‘Devil a bit of it. May partly account for his unpopularity, of course. Ours are a prejudiced, sentimental, insular, irrational people.’
‘Irrational?’ said Laura, seizing on the one adjective with which she totally disagreed. ‘Why? What makes you say that?’
‘The kilt. The sporran. The Gaelic language. The Highland weather. Robert Burns. Tossing the caber. Deer-stalking. Bannockburn. That is to name a few items which leap immediately to the mind. There are probably dozens more.’
‘Explain yourself, you renegade!’
‘Now, now! No rude epithets. Who on earth else but us Scots would sport a kilt except in a warm country? It’s simply shrieking for rheumatism. Who else would carry his purse on his lower abdomen – to put it politely – when he could use pockets? Who else would spell the word lamhan (hands) when it’s pronounced lávin? Who else would live in a country where it’s always raining? Who else would revere a poet who wrote in a dialect that scarcely any civilised person can understand? Who else would have invented a sport which is both terribly strenuous and completely unspectacular? Who else would crawl on his belly up mountain burns and over supersaturated heather, peat hags and other assorted bogs, to bag an animal whose flesh has to be practically putrified before it’s chewable? Who else would have won Bannockburn?’
‘Ah, now you’re talking!’ said Laura. ‘Did you ever find out, by the way, why Mrs Grant borrowed my car that morning?’
‘Oh, yes. I was going to tell you that. She did go to Tannasgan, as you thought at the time.’
‘What for?’
‘To throw stones at An Tigh Mór.’
‘What?’
‘Apparently that which had made you drunk had made her bold, and she hated Bradan. Of course, we don’t really know why.’
‘I wasn’t drunk!’
‘No, but, as the Irish Policeman (was it?) said, you had drink taken. I only hope (from the same source) that you had not the appearance of a woman who had knocked at a back door.’
‘I’m ashamed of you,’ said Laura. ‘To think that I should listen to all of this rot, not only from my husband and the father of my child, but from a Scotsman born and bred!’
‘Talking of your child,’ said Gavin, ‘I sent for him. Doubtless that is the winsome boy even now at the door.’